On June 1, 2005,
Mark W. Felt Jr., a retired FBI official, claimed that
he was "Deep Throat." Yes, Felt certainly
had been a source for Bob Woodward (and many other reporters)
during the Watergate era. In my book Between
Fact and Fiction-- published in 1975-- I wrote
about Woodward's "Deep Throat": "The
prosecutors at the Department of Justice now believe
the mysterious source was probably Mark W. Felt, Jr,
who was then an associate deputy director, because one
statement the reporters attribute to Deep throat could
only have been made by Felt."

The traceable
information that aroused the interest of the Watergate
prosecutors concerned data from a few FBI 302 files
that sent Woodward and Bernstein after Donald Segretti,
which turned out to be, if not a wild goose chase, irrelevant
to the Watergate crime. The issue here was the
FBI's curious role in feeding Woodward and other reporters
stories on Watergate. (See my 1974 article in Commentary.)
The FBI-- or Felt-- had reason to orchestrate such a
diversion since at the time the FBI itself had conducted
a series of illegal break-ins ordered by Mark Felt (who
later was prosecuted and convicted for the crime.)
The prosecutors eventually concluded Felt provided this
information"to get rid of [FBI head L.Patrick]
Gray." Woodward now confirms that the prosecutors
were correct: Felt provided information to Woodward.
But is Felt the source described in Woodward's book
as Deep Throat-- or is Felt merely a part of a composite
character.

Consider,
for example, Woodward and Bernstein explosive Washington
Post on November 8, 1973 that there had been
"deliberate erasures" on one of the White
House tapes. In All The President's Men,
Woodward says that he "moved the flower pot"
on his sixth floor balcony (that was a signal to Deep
Throat), met Deep Throat in an underground garage, who
then told him that the tapes contained "gaps"
that indicated it had been tampered with.

But the person who provided that information
could not have been Felt according to records examined
by Nixon's biographer Jonathan Aitken. In November
1973, only six people knew about the gaps in the tape--
Richard Nixon; Rose Mary Woods (Nixon's personal secretary);
Alexander Haig (The White House chief of staff); Haig's
deputy, Major General John C Bennett and two trusted
Nixon White House aides, Fred Buzhardt and Steve Bull.
Not only was Felt not privy to that White House information,
but he was no longer in the FBI, having left that October
(after having run a series of illegal FBI break-ins
that would result in his own conviction.)

Felt also repeatedly denied being the source of this
information, and states in his 1979 autobiography that
he met Woodward only once-- and in his office. If so,
Felt cannot be the "Deep Throat" character
who met with Woodward over and over again in the underground
garage. He is merely a component of the Deep Throat
package.

Part of the "mystery" enjoyed by Woodward, is that there
are no corroborative witnesses to any of these meetings
between Woodward and Deep Throat (no more than there was
a corroborative witness to Woodward's putative death bed
interview with CIA Director William Casey). Not even Woodward's
co-author, Carl Bernstein, was present at any of these
meetings supposedly took place in an empty underground
parking garage.

It is also of interest that Woodward never mentioned
Deep Throat in any of the newspaper stories he wrote
in the Washington Post between 1972 and 1974. In these
stories he consistently attributes his information to
multiple sources. Consider, for example, his (and Bernstein's)
1972 revelation that at least "50 people" who worked
for the White House and the Nixon campaign were involved
in spying and sabotage. In the Washington Post (October
10, 1972, p A1), he attributes the information to multiple
"FBI reports." In 1974, in All The President's Men (p.135),
he puts the exact same information in the mouth of Deep
Throat. In the scene in the book, first, he tussles
with Deep Throat on the floor of the underground garage
at 3 AM, grabbing his arm, then Deep Throat tells him:"You
can safely say that 50 people worked for the White House
and the CRP to play games and spy and sabotage and gather
information."

In fact, Deep Throat did not exist in the early versions
of the book, according to Woodward's book agent, David
Obst, who explains: "In the original draft of their
book, Deep Throat was not mentioned. In the second draft
he suddenly appeared and it was a better book for the
addition, a much more exciting one."

This is not
to suggest Woodward did not have many real sources for
his Washington Post reporting. But fusing them into
a single composite character is the same operation novelists
perform. A composite character, since he does not exist
(and cannot sue) is fiction.